Dip

A dip is a dramatic dance move in which a performer drops backward to the floor, landing on their back with one leg extended, usually at a climactic beat. In ballroom culture the move is one of the five core elements of voguing, alongside catwalk, duckwalk, hand performance, and floor performance, developed by Black and Latino LGBTQ+ performers in New York. Mainstream audiences know it from RuPaul's Drag Race and the series Pose, where it is often called a death drop or shablam. Many in the ballroom community push back on those names, arguing that dip is the authentic term and that the pop-culture labels erase the move's origins. Variations include controlled soft dips and sharper hard dips.